The Walk

I saw a movie once at the National Holocaust Museum in Washington DC. It was at the end of the tour I took. We all filed into the small theater and the film started. Survivors told their stories. By the end I wept. A women shared her story in flashes. A man shared his in flashes. It was summer and she was going to school when her father made her change from her sandals to her winter boots. She thought he was crazy but he seemed so determined she did what he said. The man joined the US Army and went to fight in WWII. The day the woman wore her winter boots in the middle of the summer was the day her family was rounded up and sent to a concentration camp. She spent two years in that camp wearing her winter boots. Near the end of the war she was forced with thousand of others who had miraculously survived to march from one camp to the next in the middle of the winter. If she had not been wearing those boots she would have died. Her father was already dead. The man helped the US Army push into Germany. He had seen terrible things over the last few years but nothing prepared him for what was to come. When the German soldiers abandoned the camp where she was they were free but so many did not have the strength to leave. They were living skeletons. She and several other women went out side the gates to get water. There they were approached by US Soldiers who had come to liberate them. When he approached the group of women he was shocked. They were like skeletons with grey hair but none of them were older then twenty. He asked if he could help them, he called them ladies. When the US soldier called them ladies she wept. It was the first time in years anyone had ever referred to them as ladies. She fell in love with him just a little bit. That love would grow and be returned. They would marry and have children and one day would make a film that would be played in the National Holocaust Museum.

Left then right

First she turned left on Main street walked a few blocks and turned right into the alley. She dropped the bag of cash in the red dumpster and walked back out heading back the way she had come. It was all the money she had in the world but it was worth it to get him back. Who ever had done this had known her weakness. She was both angry and sad that someone must either hate her or was so desperate for money they would do this evil thing. 53,429 dollars. That was how much they wanted. It was exactly what she had in her savings account. She had a sneaking suspicion that the person who was doing this knew here and knew her pretty well. She walked back to her apartment on pins and needles. They said they would call once they had retrieved the money with the location to pick him up. She waited half the night for the call but it never came. She was devastated. She had done everything they asked but still they had not given him back. She cried that night for him. The the next morning through the haze of her tears she heard a faint barking. She jumped up. The barking seemed to be coming from the entry way of her apartment building. She threw open the door and there he was jumping with joy, wagging his little tail. Her baby was home.

The Pile

It lay in piles about the room, tall piles, small piles, wide piles, and very green piles. He came to the room often just to look at it. All that money just laying around. They had no use for money anymore but they kept it here stored in a subbasement of the Cultural History Museum. As a guard at the museum he had keys to everything and on his breaks he would often come down here to see the money. They had never had money during his life time and it was not until he had started working at the museum had he ever seen it. He could on a certain level understand its draw. It was so lovely to look at. They had not need of money now. Everything was was kept on little chips embedded in the back of the neck. When he got paid they ran a scanner across his neck, when he bought food they ran a scanner across his neck, and when he bought a dirty magazine they scanned his neck. It was easier that way. But when he looked at those piles of money he sometimes wished for the old days. One of his co-workers would make fun of him always telling him statistics about crime and money and germs and money. He knew it was not healthy but he loved the look of it. He imagined that spending it had felt good. To actually have something tangible as proof of days work must have been nice. So it was not a surprise to his co-workers when he was discovered that day, naked and laughing, rolling around in the piles of money.